Softskills: Development by…

Asshole Driven development (ADD) â€“ Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.

Cognitive Dissonance development (CDD) â€“ In any organization where there are two or more divergent beliefs on how software should be made. The tension between those beliefs, as itâ€™s fought out in various meetings and individual decisions by players on both sides, defines the project more than any individual belief itself.

Cover Your Ass Engineering (CYAE) â€“ The driving force behind most individual efforts is to make sure than when the shit hits the fan, they are not to blame.

Development By Denial (DBD) â€“ Everybody pretends there is a method for whatâ€™s being done, and that things are going ok, when in reality, things are a mess and the process is on the floor. The worse things get, the more people depend on their denial of whatâ€™s really happening, or their isolation in their own small part of the project, to survive.

Get Me Promoted Methodology (GMPM) â€“ People write code and design things to increase their visibility, satisfy their bossâ€™s whims, and accelerate their path to a raise or the corner office no matter how far outside of stated goals their efforts go. This includes allowing disasters to happen so people can be heroes, writing hacks that look great in the short term but crumble after the individual has moved on, and focusing more on the surface of work than its value.